Vampire Rain draws blood from Ignition Entertainment?

While we’re bringing up rumors about AQ Interactive, remember that awful Xbox 360 game Vampire Rain? The one where you hunted Nightwalkers Tom Clancy style? It may have flopped, but Artoon is still plugging away at a PlayStation 3 version. Originally, Vampire Rain was a dual platform release.

Despite acidic reviews Ignition Entertainment, the company who might be bringing Docomodake to the West, appears to be the publisher of the much delayed PS3 edition. Gamefly says yes and so does the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (Germany’s ESRB equivalent.) Even if Artoon polishes Vampire Rain the name alone has a bad taste in the game community with some publications calling it the worse game of 2007.

So, why would Ignition Entertainment publish this in the West? Let me rephrase that, why would Ignition Entertainment publish Vampire Rain (PS3) and Docomodake in the West? They must have some kind of extended relationship with AQ Interactive.

I’m probably alone in this, but I actually found the game to be quite enjoyable. I think this is the game equivalent of a B-Movie, one that could perfectly fit in the “Simple Series” games with it’s mixture of elements and genres.

My first impression (when I played the 360 demo) was far from great, because I went to play it expecting to be able to kill the vampires like I kill enemies in a game like Splinter Cell (and got my ass kicked every 30 seconds or so), but once I got a little more into the game I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, and bought (and finished) the full game.
The gameplay can be a bit of trial-and-error at the start, but once you get the hang of it it’s far from frustrating as most reviews mentioned. And unlike what many reviewers said you can actually kill the vampires (they are not invincible), and a few of the later stages can be quite fast paced.